


Every morning another chapter

by shella688



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, References to Death to the Mechanisms, character backstory, or my take on it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:54:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23132752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shella688/pseuds/shella688
Summary: The Library at New Alexandria contains stories of all forms. Some are bound in leather, some are displayed in pixels, a few are only told, never to be written down.One of these stories is a young girl who will eventually be known as Ivy Alexandria.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 38





	Every morning another chapter

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a line from "Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out" by Richard Siken.  
> The poem as a whole doesn't fit this fic much but I think that line does

(Spoiler: at the end of it all there is a woman in a library)

  
  
  


It began, or so she assumes, with a small girl in a big library. Her memories of this time aren't complete - only the soft hush of turning pages and the feeling of running a finger through the gathered dust.

And her surname. A child of the Library at New Alexandria she was called just that - Alexandria. She would carry the library with her always.

But that's in the future. We are still at the beginning, with a small girl who only ever wanted to  _ learn _ .

It wasn't a bad childhood, exactly. Just that the library Keepers didn't know what to do with a living person, and one small girl could easily slip between the towering stacks of books. She didn't mind though, not when she climbed the bookshelves like other children climbed trees and the stories became her closest friends.

  
  
  


(Spoiler: she knows the flames are coming long before the fire's lit)

  
  
  


The small girl grew, never leaving the walls of her library. But things still changed.

There were no longer thick layers of dust - none had a chance to settle before the girl disturbed it again, walking the same circles in a building that became ever smaller.

The library didn’t actually change in size, of course. But the girl read and reread every book there was, even the hidden ones. She mapped the passageways snaking around the shelves and discovered secrets not even the library Keepers remembered. And the girl grew hungry for other stories.

So when the woman who called herself Doctor offered her hand and promised the stars, the girl (now a young woman in her own right) agreed without hesitation.

And then-

  
  
  


(Spoiler: there is an escape pod the woman has filled with books. 

They aren’t especially rare, or interesting, or funny, but they are  _ hers,  _ in a way nothing else ever quite was)

  
  
  


The young woman awoke to the Doctor’s smiling face and the sensation that something was wrong. Her brain whirred and clicked, cogs turning as she tried to place what was different.

Cogs? That didn't seem right - but the young woman couldn't remember things ever being otherwise.

The Doctor told her everything was going to plan - failing to mention what that plan was.

She hadn’t lied though. The young woman saw the stars, and planets too, and so so many other wonders, hidden in a space vaster than a small girl could ever have imagined.

The young woman never had a name in the library; she was always just another story kept there, in a body rather than a book. Outside, though, things were not the same. 

The others - because there were others, who hadn't always been there but who she couldn't remember living without - the others called her Ivy. And, like ivy, she grew. Grew into her role on the ship, playing flute and euphonium and anything else that caught her interest. Grew into her role as a storyteller, recording and cataloging, learning and remembering.

She called herself Hedera, and Eføy, and Kissós, and Īfiġ and a thousand other names for each world she walked on. 

Ivy Alexandria became a library in her own right.

  
  
  


(Spoiler: the doors are locked from the inside)

  
  
  


The young woman became a woman, in experience though her face didn't age. Something leftover from the Doctor, all those untold years ago. 

And things began to end. 

This didn't come as a shock. Things must end, in the same way things must begin, because how else can it be made into a good story?

The captain no- first mate no-  _ captain _ went first, stabbed through his mechanical heart as he laughed for the first time in millennia. Next, the science officer - diving into a black hole just to see what was behind it - and the gunner - crashing into a moon and revelling in the explosion.

And at last the woman returned to a library. 

Not the library she came from, not the library she now was, but a library nevertheless. She sat surrounded by books - her first and longest companions, even after all this time.

  
  
  


(Spoiler: Ivy Alexdria is going to die)

(Spoiler: Her life, everything about her, is only a story)

(Spoiler: Stories don't stop existing just because they've finished)


End file.
